5 Practical Tips For Phone Filming 🤳

Smartphone videos often are created in ways that don’t allow them to live up to their full potential. Over the course of the following post, we detail how to get the best from your smartphone for marketing/filmmaking purposes.

1. Find A Window Or Other Fitting Light Source

Almost everyone knows that professional filming equipment has many quality benefits over cell phone video. What is commonly misunderstood, though, are the reasons for this. In fact, one of the major reasons why professionally filmed media has a more “Hollywood” look than homemade movies comes down to how a scene is lit. 

Smartphone sensors are much smaller than this mirrorless camera’s sensor.

Large cinema cameras have large sensors. This means, in a simplified way, that they can pick up and interpret more light over a course of any given moment in time. Smartphones, on the other hand, have very small sensors which typically need more/brighter scene lighting to produce clean images. 

As this is the case, giving your smartphone’s sensor the most light possible directly gives it the best chance of looking its best. Of course, I’m not advocating you go out and buy studio lighting. Instead, though, I do advocate that phone filmmakers and marketers pay attention to the lighting available wherever they may film. 

Try to use sunlight and sunlight only for filming. Sunlight is diffused and won’t cast harsh shadows as much as office lighting. If you need additional lighting, try to find lights that are around the same color temperature as ambient (EX. try to avoid mixing warm orange sunlight with white LEDs). 

When using a window (or really any light), have it either directly in front of where you are looking or at a 90-45 degree angle from your face (as to either light your face evenly or split your face between light and shadows down the middle).

2. Balance You Vs Your Surroundings

Remember that you should be the focus of the video (not the office around you), but also that giving space around yourself makes for a better frame overall. Many amateur/beginners will film too wide and/or far away from their subject. While visually this ensures everything is captured, it does so at the sacrifice of directing the viewer’s attention. 

Try to aim for a 60/40 or 70/30 split between you and your surroundings. Always remember to leave headroom as well! Leaving a few inches between the top of your head and the frame border makes everything feel less claustrophobic and better framed. 

3. Use Separate Clips To Show Details

It’s a common tendency with cell phone video to move around your phone as you film to show objects/things of interest. While this works just fine for videos sent between you, friends, and colleges, it comes off as somewhat lazy to viewers who find a video online. 

Close up shots add very attention-grabbing visual texture!

Try to take an extra minute or two before/after filming to record separate clips highlighting property features, products, etc. Especially nowadays, there are tons of free/affordable video editing apps that make simple video stitching a breeze. 

If you’re going to be focusing on objects or locations, using separate clips instead of moving the camera/phone within the same clip can also give you more options when it comes to cutting together multiple takes and pacing the video later. An easy way to spice up your detail clips includes using directional pans such as moving the camera forward, backward, and side-to-side slowly around the featured detail/object. 

4. Be Aware Of Background Noise

Always look down the street before you film outside and check for loud busses!

After 20 takes, you finally got the perfect introduction to your property video filmed! Later in the day, you open up iMovie to begin your edit, and…you can’t hear a single word you're saying over the family of birds chirping throughout the clip. You may want to blame yourself for this mistake, but it's hard enough to remember lines, time constraints, etc. while filming on your own. Audio is just another thing to remember in a long list!

In truth though, audio considerations should rank directly alongside visual ones. It has been found that the average content viewer is much more likely to put up with lacking video quality over noisy, hard-to-hear, or distorted audio. Take the time when choosing a location to wait a few seconds before filming and listen. It can be tough to hear minute audio details through phone speakers, so always err on the side of caution and trust your actual ears while on location. Also, while noisy things like buses on a street may be more predictable and allow you to record in between them passing, distractions like birds are inherently more random and may make a location not worth it to use. 

Of course, if finding quiet environments is a challenge for you then buying external audio recorders is always an option. Smartphones have been getting increasingly better at recording clean audio on their own, but if you aren’t happy with the audio you’ve been getting, then you can look into small lav or wireless mic setups. 

5. Use Back-Side Camera(s) If Possible

If your phone has multiple lenses, then this also opens up additional creative ways to film your videos!

It’s probably your go-to move to film yourself with your front-facing camera and everything else with your back-side camera. Remember the first tip about light and sensor size/quality, though? Most smartphone manufacturers put much better sensors on the rear of modern phones. This is not to mention the better lenses in front of those sensors. 

Because of this essentially free quality upgrade over your front-facing camera, I would highly recommend using the back-side camera(s). It may take some time to transition to them and still be able to nail your framing, but I argue it's well worth it. Besides, you should always be looking into the lens when recording and not at yourself/your screen. 

Want Some More Assistance?

Utopia Media and Marketing offers content filming for our New York City clients and remote content guidance/management to our non-NYC clients. Get in touch with us today or explore our website to learn more. Additionally, we plan on updating this article to add value when possible, so be sure to check back periodically!